Deborah Bloomfield

Sea urchins look like an inanimate bundle of needles, but a closer look at these alien-like creatures reveals a surprisingly complex “all-body brain” that challenges our assumptions about nervous systems, evolution, and the nature of intelligence. Echinoderms – the phylum of animals that includes starfish, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and others – are easy to […]

Astronomers have detected the radio burst from a massive eruption known as a coronal mass ejection (CME) on an M-type star 133 light-years away. CMEs have been suspected to occur on other stars based on activity that frequently accompanies them on the Sun, but this is the first direct evidence. Unfortunately, the major advance for […]

2024 YR4, the “city-killer” asteroid that briefly made headlines last year due to a small but non-zero chance that it may hit the Earth, may soon have increased odds of striking our Moon. Asteroid 2024 YR4 was first discovered on December 27, 2024, by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in Chile. Initial […]

Faced with filthy waterways and a worsening public health crisis, Chicago’s authorities took a radical step to literally reverse the flow of the Chicago River in 1900. Needless to say, the move did not help relations with the city of St Louis, whose residents suddenly found themselves downstream of a river brimming with garbage, human […]

The Sun has just fired off its most powerful solar flare of 2025, causing radio blackouts across half the globe. As the barrage of charged particles makes its way toward Earth, the aurorae borealis – or Northern Lights – could become visible at unusually low latitudes tonight. The rest of this article is behind a […]

Astronomers at the MeerKAT radio telescope in South Africa have reported the first radio detection from interstellar object 3I/ATLAS.  First a recap for anyone who isn’t up to speed with our third interstellar visitor. On July 1, 2025, astronomers at the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System did their job beautifully, detecting an object whizzing through […]

Paleontologists have confirmed their suspicions that Australia once had crocodiles that roamed forests and probably climbed trees, to jump on potential prey. Although evidence for this conclusion has come from several sources, the final piece of the puzzle was provided by an apparently unlikely source: eggshells. Australians are fond of scaring tourists with tales of […]

On July 1, 2025, the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) did its job superbly and spotted a sizeable object as it hurtled its way through the Solar System, 670 million kilometers (410 million miles) from the Sun. By studying the object’s trajectory, it was soon confirmed to be an interstellar object, meaning an object […]

There are, in other words, plenty of potential candidates. But a new study presents an alternative contender: the humble bumble. “We wanted to find out if bumblebees could learn the difference between […] different durations” of flashing lights, explained Alex Davidson, a PhD student in the Queen Mary University of London’s School of Biological and […]

We all know the senses: there’s sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing, and the sixth senses A through F. Now, though, there’s a “seventh” on the cards – and it’s spookier than you might expect. It’s the first time that the new sense, called “remote touch”, has been studied in humans – and “it changes our […]

The place with the longest name in the world isn’t exactly a backwater village holding onto an ancient, obscure linguistic tradition. In fact, it’s a booming metropolis of skyscrapers that’s home to over 11 million people and welcomes around 22 million international visitors every year. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please […]

Despite being almost genetically identical to modern humans, Neanderthals had much chunkier faces, with big noses, protruding brows, and large, powerful jaws. Amazingly, these striking differences in physical appearance result from just a few tiny alterations in the so-called “dark” region of our genome. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign […]

While Europe and North America might be home to bears and wolves, they are lacking in the even larger species that roam across the continent of Africa. Even Asia and Australasia, with their freaky-looking marsupials, can’t compete with the size and volume of the world’s largest land animals. But why are there so many in […]

How do you milk a spider? It’s a question you’ve probably (read: hopefully) never asked yourself, but one that the ant-mimicking spider Toxeus magnus has got us thinking about. You see, when the momma spider’s eggs hatch and she finds herself with a clutch of bouncing baby spiderlings, she does something remarkable: she produces milk. […]

The year 1972 was a long one – and not just for Richard Nixon, whose ill-fated presidency was starting its death spiral amid the Watergate scandal. The Godfather hit cinemas, humans walked on the Moon for the last time in the 20th century, and Bloody Sunday inflamed “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland. But it wasn’t […]

Magic mushrooms, or specifically psilocybin, the active compound contained within these fungi, has gained a lot of attention since the mid-20th Century as a promising treatment for all sorts of conditions, from addiction to depression and anxiety. Hell, it even appears to be useful for providing relief for the existential fear of cancer patients. Given […]

During 2020, I – like many people in lockdown – was desperate for a pet. You can imagine the temptation, then, when a wee mouse voluntarily wandered into my living room day and night. An opportunity? I thought, but I stopped myself. Deep down, I knew all that would happen was I’d end up covered […]

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After a significant outbreak of measles that began last year, Canadian health officials have confirmed that the country has lost its measles elimination status, ending a streak that had been intact since 1998. “The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) has notified the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) that Canada no longer holds measles elimination […]

A team of researchers studying the pyramids of Giza using non-invasive techniques believes they have identified two new “anomalies” in the Menkaure Pyramid. The Menkaure Pyramid, built for Pharaoh Menkaure, who ruled between 2490 and 2472 BCE, is the smallest of the pyramids at the Giza site in Egypt. It is also the least-disturbed of […]